He doesn't allow her to play checkers. He doesn't like it when she tries to help him in politics. Jody says that her role as a woman is to be a good, mayor's wife. It is as if Jody and Janie battle each other's means of finding fulfillment. Jody believes that he can control Janie, and the world around him - that is the vision he struggles toward in life. Janie shatters that image by fighting back through the use of her tongue. She embarrasses her husband in front of the town folks, because his goal in life counteracts with her goal in life, which is to find her place as a woman. Their marriage comes crashing down, and Janie marries another man, Tea Cake. Tea Cake is a bit more accepting of the fact that women and men were created equal. He teaches Janie how to play checkers, and even teaches her how to shoot a gun. Janie and Tea Cake even share the same job in the fields, and that is important to Janie, because for the first time in her life Janie does a job that is usually dominated by men. Those facts and examples of feminism were to critics like honey is to bees.
The novel was published first in 1937, before World War II. It was during World War II, that women's rights movement really started to take place. Before that, men had more rights and were in command. Hurston's novel was perceived as a feministic work. Critics rejected her work, saying that the difference which Hurston presents between men and women "caus[ed] a rupture in language and communication that has [.] a decentering effect on us"(Rider, 3). Critics believed that the book had a "definite sense of destabilization"(Rider, 3). The struggle for power between men and women in Their Eyes Were Watching God made Hurston's contemporary writers very critical and picky.
Only many years later, when women achieved the same rights as men, critics realized that Hurston's book was really important. Hurston tried to show how hard it is for a woman to be a woman, especially black, in a society dominated by white men.
